


The Voice

by dangerouspheels



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7640026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangerouspheels/pseuds/dangerouspheels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan didn't want to hear a voice in his head, because that would mean he had a soulmate. Dan didn't want love. For Dan, loving someone meant getting hurt. When he heard the voice for the first time, he tried to shut it out. Can he shut it out forever?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Voice

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first phanfic. I wrote this months ago and decided that I didn't like it, but I found this on my old laptop and I think it's worth sharing it with you guys. Let me know what you think!

Dan was frightened. He tried to go over every person he’d met that day to find out who could be the stranger in his head, but he didn’t have a clue. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.  
He didn’t want this. His parents had told him the story of when they heard each other for the first time. That special first time when they knew they’d found their soulmate.  
Because that’s how life works, Dan was told. When you met your soulmate, you’d start having a connection. You’d feel different for a few hours. And then the real thing started: the voice. You’d be able to communicate with your soulmate using only your thoughts. It was magical.  
For Dan, it wasn’t. He didn’t believe in soulmates; he didn’t want love. He knew that he’d only get hurt if he loved someone too much. Since he was old enough to understand the concept of love and soulmates, his only wish had been that he would never have to hear a woman’s voice in his head.  
Ironically, his wish came true.  
He woke up at four in the morning, hearing a voice in his head saying: “Hello?”  
A male’s voice.  
Dan’s heart started racing. No, this couldn’t be happening. He had been able to escape from this for a long time, this wasn’t happening.  
The voice spoke again, and it sounded as frightened as Dan felt: “Please say something.”  
It was a deep but friendly voice, Dan analysed unintentionally. He immediately realised that this was the reason why he hated love so much. He didn’t want to hurt the friendly and clearly scared male, but he couldn’t talk to him. He couldn’t tell him his name and meet him somewhere for coffee. He couldn’t start a life together like they were supposed to, waiting for the moment he would get hurt. Because getting hurt was inevitable according to Dan.  
It was quiet for a minute, and Dan felt relieved. Maybe his ‘soulmate’ had realised that having a conversation with a scared teenager wouldn’t be pleasant.  
But Dan’s relieve had come too soon.  
“Please, I know this is scary. Talk to me. It seems like we’re stuck together anyway,” the voice almost begged.  
The sudden realisation that they were stuck together hit Dan like a bus, and he panicked. He didn’t want to hurt the male in his head, but doing it now would probably do less damage than waiting until he had gotten the chance to get to know the voice.  
“I don’t want this. Leave me alone,” Dan said. Then he shut the voice out. He knew that the connection would always be there, but he could at least try to keep his head quiet.  
The hours passed, but sleeping wasn’t possible anymore.  
It was a guy. His soulmate was a guy. Weirdly, it didn’t bother Dan that much. Maybe it didn’t because he knew it didn’t matter. He didn’t have to tell his parents and his friends he was gay, because he wouldn’t do anything with it, ever.  
But still, he was curious. What was his soulmate like? Where did they meet? Was it at school? It had to be, because Dan hadn’t been outside that day except for school. He had been watching YouTube videos from four pm till two am, only leaving his room for dinner. Where could he have possibly met his soulmate? All questions that would never be answered, because having those questions answered meant Dan would have to talk to him.  
Days passed, and Dan started to feel the urge to open his mind. To hear his voice again.  
But he didn’t. His opinion on love hadn’t changed and it never would.  
Months passed, and Dan managed to store the voice and the urge to hear it again somewhere in the back of his head. He had been watching a lot of YouTube videos lately, especially from a guy called AmazingPhil. He seemed to be a nice guy, and Dan seemed to have a lot in common with him.  
Dan went into full stalking mode. He felt kind of awkward, but it was worth it. Phil had replied to him. That one reaction turned into long skype sessions. Dan had never had a lot of friends, and had never considered anyone his ‘best friend’. But Phil changed everything. Phil even encouraged Dan to make his own YouTube videos.  
Phil Lester made October 2009 the most thrilling month of 18-year old Dan’s life.  
In October 2009, Dan uploaded his first YouTube video and Danisnotonfire was born. But more importantly, Dan met Phil in October 2009 at the Manchester train station. Dan couldn’t remember he ever felt so happy. Seeing Phil in the crowd, running up to him, hugging him, talking to him, it was all perfect. It was the most perfect day of Dan’s life.  
But the perfect days didn’t stop coming. The years that followed were the best years of Dan’s life. He moved to Manchester with Phil, his YouTube-channel started growing, he got his own radio show with Phil, he wrote a book with Phil, he went on tour with Phil. Dan loved his life. Sure, being famous had its downsides. He was always being watched, and the shipping got out of hand sometimes, but Dan didn’t mind that much. For some strange reason, Dan even enjoyed going through the phan tag on Tumblr sometimes. 

Unfortunately, his crazy life hadn’t stopped Dan from thinking about the voice. The guilt crushed him every time one of his friends found their soulmate. Felix found Marzia, Zoe found Alfie, and every time he saw their happiness, Dan realised that there was a man waiting for that happiness somewhere.  
Phil saw it too. They had been sitting on Dan’s bed for hours, talking about their life and animals and death, when conversation ceased. Dan didn’t mind, silence between them had always been pleasant, but Phil clearly wanted to say something. After a few minutes of waiting, Dan couldn’t handle Phil’s distressed face anymore.  
“Phil,” Phil looked up when he heard his name. “What’s wrong? You’ve been staring at the wall for ten minutes and you look like a constipated hamster.”  
Phil hesitated for a moment, but after a while he seemed to decide to tell Dan what had been on his mind.  
“Dan, have you ever met your soulmate?”  
Dan froze. That was not what he was expecting. They had never talked about soulmates and there was a good reason why Dan never brought it up. But Phil looked at him expectantly with his big blue eyes and Dan realised that this was his best friend. He didn’t realise it until that moment, but he had longed to talk about his soulmate for years. Even if he didn’t want to meet him, this guy was his soulmate. Dan couldn’t just forget about him. He loved Phil, so if there was anyone he could tell about his soulmate, it was Phil.  
“Yes.”  
Phil looked surprised. “Really? Why have I never heard of her, who is she?”  
Dan’s plan to tell Phil everything ceased to exist as soon as Phil said ‘her’. Phil expected his soulmate to be a girl and he didn’t have the balls to tell him that he was wrong. So he just went with it.  
“I… I only heard her once.” He paused. Phil waited in silence. “I don’t want a soulmate, Phil. It will only hurt the both of us. I shut my soulmate out.”  
Phil’s encouraging smile turned into disbelief when he realised what Dan had said. He seemed to process the information for a minute before he spoke again: “Dan, you can’t keep shutting her out. Please listen to me.”  
Dan didn’t want to listen. He had managed to shut the voice out for years, and he wasn’t planning on letting it in anytime soon. But still the fact that Phil said ‘her’ bothered him more than he wanted to admit.  
“I can’t, Phil. It would only hurt the both of us. My soulmate has probably forgotten about me anyway after all this time, so why wouldn’t I leave it this way?” Dan tried to sound indifferent, but his cracked in the middle of the sentence.  
Nothing hurt him more than the look on Phil’s face. Phil clearly didn’t understand Dan’s opinion on love, and he thought it was unfair to shut someone out like that. But the worst part was the minor look of pain in Phil’s eyes. It was gone as fast as it had appeared, but it had definitely been there. It made Dan realise that Phil had never said anything about his soulmate. Dan just assumed that he hadn’t met his soulmate yet, but the agony in Phil’s eyes made Dan wonder if there wasn’t more to the story.  
But he didn’t ask. Phil probably hadn’t told him for a reason and Dan didn’t want that look of pain to appear again.  
Dan could’ve started crying when it did as soon as Phil started speaking.  
“Dan, please listen to me,” he hesitated, “I’m… My… I heard a voice once,” he stuttered.  
Dan held his breath without realising. Was Phil going to tell him about his soulmate? A story that obviously didn’t end well?  
Phil was clearly struggling to find the right words, so Dan let him think for a moment.  
“I only heard it once. Then my soulmate shut me out.”  
A look of pain and genuine sadness took over Phil’s beautiful eyes before he continued.  
“Don’t do that to yours, Dan. It’s a long time ago for me, but believe me if I say that nobody forgets. Nobody moves on without spending the rest of their life feeling like there’s a part of them missing.”  
Dan wished he could wash that sadness of Phil’s face, but he knew Phil wouldn’t get his soulmate back if Dan talked to his. As much as Dan wanted to help, he couldn’t. If he was honest with himself, he was still as frightened as he was the day he heard the voice for the first time.  
He couldn’t find the words to tell Phil that he wasn’t going to let the voice in. He imagined the look on Phil’s face getting even worse. He imagined it to be there forever. Dan had to fight back his tears. He opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t think of any word to say. So he closed it again.  
When Phil got of the bed, Dan could see a flash of anger on Phil’s face. While Phil was walking towards the door, Dan realised he didn’t want him to go. It scared him that he needed Phil like that, he had never needed anyone. But he did. He needed Phil to sit with him on his bed and tell him about animals until 3am. He needed to talk to Phil until they both couldn’t keep their eyes open anymore.  
When Phil reached the door, Dan started panicking.  
“Wait, Phil.”  
Something seemed to snap inside of Phil. He slammed the palm of his hand against the door, making Dan jump.  
“God damn it, Dan! Don’t you care about anything else but yourself?”  
The anger in Phil’s eyes didn’t frighten Dan because he was scared Phil was going to hurt him. Dan knew Phil could never hurt anyone on purpose. Dan was frightened because he realised this was his fault. The mix of anger and pain in Phil’s eyes was entirely Dan’s fault and that realisation hurt Dan a thousand times more than the words Phil had said.  
“You fucking owe it to her, Dan!” Phil shouted and a single tear flowed on his left cheek.  
Suddenly Dan didn’t want to fight it anymore. He wanted to tell Phil everything. He would do anything to take away Phil’s pain.  
He didn’t want to fight it anymore.  
“I owe it to him,” Dan whispered. But Phil heard him anyway, because Phil listened. No matter how angry he was, Phil always listened.  
The anger in Phil’s eyes got instantly replaced by friendship. He realised that Dan needed a friend and he was there for him. How did Dan ever deserve a friend like Phil?  
Phil sat back down on the bed and pulled Dan into a tight hug.  
Dan couldn’t hold back his tears anymore. He sobbed loudly into Phil’s shoulder, but Phil didn’t seem to mind. He only held Dan closer.  
Dan had never cried in front of anyone, but crying into Phil’s shoulder didn’t feel wrong. If there was anyone Dan wanted to hold him while he cried, it was Phil. He didn’t have a best friend for the first eighteen years of his life, but he had one now.  
It was Phil’s quiet sobbing that made Dan realise something. Phil was always there for him, whatever he needed. Phil could be quite a busy guy sometimes, but he would drop everything if Dan needed him. And Phil never asked something back for it. Now Phil wanted Dan to do one thing, he was refusing to do it.  
Dan didn’t deserve Phil, and he never would. But he could give him the one thing he asked for, even if it was the hardest thing Dan had ever done in his entire life.  
His heart raced faster than ever and even the thought of doing it terrified Dan, but he was going to do it for Phil.  
“Phil?” he asked, looking up into Phil’s eyes, which were still beautiful even though they were red and watery from crying.  
“Yes?” Phil answered, clearly not knowing why Dan was suddenly using his serious asking voice.  
“C… Can you please give me some privacy while I talk to my soulmate?” Dan stuttered.  
Phil was startled by Dan’s request and didn’t seem to be able to speak. Instead, he pulled Dan into another tight hug and left the room.  
The sudden realisation of what he was about to do struck Dan like lightning.  
Had his opinion on love changed? He didn’t think so, so what was he going to say to the friendly voice that he was about to allow access to his head?  
He had been sitting on his bed for 10 minutes, unable to move, thinking about what he was going to say, when Dan stopped thinking. He would never do this if he kept wondering what would happen. He just needed to do it. So he did.  
He breathed in slowly and opened his mind.  
The first thing he heard was a loud gasp of surprise.  
“Hello?” he said hesitantly.  
No answer, only a sigh. Dan couldn’t tell if it was a sigh of relief or disappointment. Probably a sigh of disappointment, since he was an asshole who had shut the nice person on the other end out for years.  
Well, at least he’d tried, he told himself. But if he really believed that, why were the tears flowing over his cheeks again?  
He should’ve been happy; he didn’t want this whole soulmate-thing. But why did he have to fight the urge to beg his soulmate to talk to him and accept his apologies?  
His apologies. Even if his soulmate didn’t want to hear it, he couldn’t end this without apologizing.  
“I’m so sorry,” was the last thing he could say before the uncontrollable sobbing took over his whole existence.  
Until he heard a voice. A deep, friendly voice he would always recognize.  
“I know,” Phil said with a cracking voice.  
Suddenly, Dan didn’t remember how to breath anymore. He didn’t remember how to speak. He didn’t remember how to think.  
Someway he got on his feet, finding himself standing in the doorway of his bedroom, staring at the man on the other side of the hallway.  
They both clearly didn’t know what to say, but apparently Phil hadn’t lost every ability to speak.  
“Dan,” he started, but he didn’t know how to continue.  
Only hearing the raven haired male say his name was enough to make Dan’s mind go blank.  
With large steps he bridged the gap between him and Phil and crushed his lips against Phil’s.  
Phil’s surprise faded within a second and he kissed Dan back with everything he had.


End file.
